


Bring Him Home

by RetroactiveCon



Series: Hold Tight to What You Love [6]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fic, Trans Barry Allen, Trans Cisco Ramon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21761800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon
Summary: “Barry!” Leonard runs to him. He reaches out to touch Barry’s face and his hand passes right through him. “Barry!”“You can’t reach him like this.” The voice seems to come from all around him. If Leonard didn’t know better, he’d say the lightning was speaking. “We brought him here to keep him safe.”
Relationships: Barry Allen/Leonard Snart
Series: Hold Tight to What You Love [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571482
Comments: 14
Kudos: 157





	Bring Him Home

**Author's Note:**

> So this is technically-but-not-really a prompt fill for someone on Tumblr who asked me to do basically this storyline but with pregnant omega!Barry. I don't do A/B/O, but I offered to do trans!Barry instead. Whoever asked for the fic hasn't replied, but I'm trans and will happily take any excuse to write trans characters, so this happened. 
> 
> Also, I haven't watched the Crisis crossover yet, so this is entirely based on predictions of what happens in Crisis. If it's inaccurate, that's on me - sorry.

Leonard hasn’t set foot in this apartment in two weeks. 

“Lenny.” At his side, Lisa is watching with wide, sympathetic eyes. “I know how much you loved him, but…he’s not coming back. If you can’t live here without him, I understand. That’s why I’m here—to help you pack up and move out.”

He glances around the living room. The pile of physics books on the coffee table is exactly where Barry left it. In his mind’s eye, Leonard can see him as he was the night before the Crisis—hunched over, face haggard, looking for any hope against the antimatter wave. Leonard had pulled him to bed and held him while he sobbed (“I’m not ready, I’m not ready, I don’t want to leave you”). 

“I can’t do this,” he snaps. 

“Lenny—” She grabs his arm, but he shrugs free of her grip and runs out the door. He can’t do this. Barry is all over that apartment—his special interests, his science things, his clothing—and Leonard can’t face the memories. He can’t believe he lost his boy. 

Why he goes to STAR Labs, he has no idea, save perhaps that Caitlin and Cisco are losing their minds trying to bring Barry back. He needs to feel like he’s doing something, even if that something is demonstrably in vain. 

Instead of anything productive, he walks into the middle of a fight. “You’re not gonna tell him?” Cisco demands. “Caity, he’s losing his mind already and you wanna keep it from him that he didn’t just lose one person, he lost two?” 

“Barry had barely come to terms with it himself,” Caitlin says. Her voice doesn’t have the icy echo of Killer Frost—this is one of Caitlin’s increasingly rare times in the front. “He made me swear not to tell—”

“Tell me _what?”_ Leonard demands. 

Both of them freeze as effectively as if he’d hit them with the cold gun. Caitlin ducks her head. Cisco drops his Twizzler and pronounces, “Well, now you’ve gotta tell him.”

Caitlin rubs her hands together. Ice-white fog seeps from her fingertips, but Killer Frost doesn’t emerge. “Barry was pregnant,” she admits. “He came to me about a week before he…before the Crisis. I’m so sorry, Len, I know you two were trying—”

“Pregnant?” Leonard’s head swims. He doesn’t want to know this. He doesn’t want to think about a baby with his dark curls and Barry’s bright, beautiful smile. He doesn’t want to think of Barry, belly swollen, complaining about being off testosterone for over a year. He doesn’t want to know he lost something else. “No. No, he couldn’t have…” 

“He told me not to tell you.” Caitlin wrings her hands. “He was so afraid.” 

Leonard thinks again of Barry sobbing, begging for the Crisis to be averted. He hadn’t known—why hadn’t Barry told him? (He knows why. Losing Barry has devastated him—losing that potential new life might have killed him.) When he finds his voice again, he demands of Cisco, “Why would you think I needed to know? I just lost my partner, and you think I need that sorrow compounded?”

In a small voice, Cisco explains, “If I was in Barry’s position, I’d have told. It doesn’t seem right to keep a secret.” 

Leonard turns on his heel and leaves. He can’t possibly stay and listen to their excuses. He needs to be alone.

***

Leonard dreams of Barry. At first, it’s of him happy, as playful and energetic as he had been when Leonard first met him. Leonard reaches out to him and he capers away, laughing. Another chase has him putting on a burst of speed, lightning crackling around him…

And the joy fades from his face. Suddenly, he’s in the middle of a maelstrom, wind whipping and lightning flashing. His eyes are enormous. “Len!” he calls, voice ragged. Leonard’s heart wrenches. “Len, I don’t—I don’t know where I am!” 

“Barry!” Leonard reaches for him. Barry makes no move to take his outstretched hand; instead, his eyes keep roving back and forth across the storm-tossed nowhere-place. 

“Where am I?” Barry hollers at the sky. “Where did you bring me?” 

An eerie red glow suffuses the lightning storm. Barry’s eyes flicker to something over Leonard’s shoulder, and whatever he sees makes the blood drain from his face. Leonard could turn to look, but he can’t tear his eyes away from his boy. 

“Please,” he whispers. “Please, I’m not ready.”

The antimatter wave descends. Moments before it touches Barry, it halts. Leonard watches in disbelief as the scene resets—Barry amidst the maelstrom, calling out, “Len! Len, I don’t—I don’t know where I am!” 

“Barry!” Leonard runs to him. He reaches out to touch Barry’s face and his hand passes right through him. _“Barry!”_

“You can’t reach him like this.” The voice seems to come from all around him. If Leonard didn’t know better, he’d say the lightning was speaking. “We brought him here to keep him safe.”

“A time loop,” Leonard murmurs. It makes perfect dream-sense, as though the words were lurking just below his consciousness the whole time. 

Behind him, Barry calls, “Where am I?” 

Lightning flashes and the red glow returns. “Find him,” the voice orders. “You know how.” 

Leonard wakes with a yell. Even before he opens his eyes, he kicks free of the covers and swings his legs out of bed. He understands what happened to Barry, and better yet, he knows what needs to be done to get him back. 

(It occurs to him when he sees the bright red 3:18 on the clock that he might still be half-asleep and that the dream-logic currently so clear to him will seem absurd under STAR Lab’s bright fluorescent lights. He vows to worry about this situation if and when it arises.) 

As he clambers into a worn pair of jeans, he texts Cisco and Caitlin. _Meet me at the lab—I know how to get Barry back._

He’s halfway out the door, jacket hanging loosely from one shoulder, when his phone buzzes against his hip. Both scientists have sent back confused strings of question marks. He doesn’t deign to answer them. They’ll know soon enough. 

He’s never been in STAR Labs this early in the morning. Most of the lights are off; dim strips flicker on when he sets foot in the hallway, but the overheads don’t switch on. He finds his way to the Speed Lab entirely by muscle memory and stops outside the door. He hasn’t come back to this part of the building since the Crisis—since the Harbinger arrived and called Barry to his sacrifice. 

“Hey!” Cisco’s hand falls heavily on his shoulder. He jumps and spins around, hands coming up to lash out. Cisco recoils. “Ack, sorry, no touchy, I forgot. What the hell was so urgent that you called us here at three in the goddamn morning?” 

Leonard waits to answer until Killer Frost strides up the hallway. Her hair is rumpled, her eyes bleary; when she gets close, she pokes a freezing finger into his chest and demands, “You’d better have a _really_ good reason for waking Caity out of a good dream.” 

“Barry is trapped in a time loop.” 

Frost and Cisco share a bewildered glance. “Uh…how do you know that?” Cisco asks. “’Cause, y’know, with my powers back now, I think I might notice that?” 

Leonard shrugs. That he can’t answer, although he’s convinced the dream was real. “I dreamt it,” he explains, fully aware of how absurd he must sound. “Barry was trapped in a lightning storm, and the lightning…” This is the strangest part. Saying it aloud makes him feel foolish. “The lightning spoke.”

To his surprise, both Cisco and Frost look as though this means something to them. “Yeah,” Cisco mutters. “The Speed Force is like that sometimes. Why it reached out to you… _I’m_ the one with interdimensional transport capabilities…”

Frost cuffs him over the head with an icy hand. “Now isn’t the time to ask why the Speed Force plays favorites,” she snaps. “Now is the time to get our boy back.” 

Lacking a Twizzler or pen with which to gesture, Cisco jabs a finger at Leonard. “Don’t even say it,” he snaps. “I know you’re gonna want to ride along. Come on, in you go. We might as well use the Speed Lab since we’re already here.” 

It takes barely five minutes for Cisco to collect his Vibe gear. As soon as he does, he holds out a weary hand to Leonard. “Come on, if you’re riding along. Also I have no idea where we’re going, so I’m gonna have to vibe you first and then vibe us there.” 

Leonard expects this to be a horrifically prolonged process. In fact, no sooner has Cisco touched his shoulder than the lightning-storm nothing-place pops back into his mind. Within a second, he can feel electricity pressing around him and wind whipping at his clothes. 

“Len! Len, I don’t—I don’t know where I am!” 

“Barry!” Leonard whirls around. The time loop is as he remembers it: red sky, flashing lightning, and in the middle of it all, Barry, looking haggard and terrified. 

“Dude, dude!” Cisco squeezes his shoulder. “Don’t let me lose hold of you. Then you’ll just be stuck here with him.”

Together, and with care, they move closer to Barry. When they’re just over an arm’s length away, Barry seems to see them for the first time. 

“Len!” He staggers forward. If Leonard could break away from Cisco, he’d be able to catch him, but he doubts Cisco could move fast enough to keep hold of him. He has to wait and watch as Barry stumbles closer. “Len, you came, you—I’ve been here so long—”

“Grab him!” Cisco yelps suddenly. Leonard can see, reflected in Barry’s eyes, the swift descent of the antimatter wave. He lunges forward, catches Barry’s wrist, and finds himself back in the Speed Lab. Barry, no longer an illusion, stands in front of him. 

“Barry.” Leonard feels numb. Barry is here, in front of him, alive. He can hardly convince himself it's real.

“Len!” Barry launches himself into Leonard’s arms. His chin digs sharply into Leonard’s shoulder and his arms wrap desperately tight around his shoulders, and then it’s all Leonard can do to keep him upright. 

“Gotcha,” he murmurs, lowering Barry to the floor. “Gotcha, Scarlet, you’re home.”

Behind him, he hears Cisco urge, “Frost, go get a nutrient drip or a power bar or something, our boy’s gotta be starving!” Barry shakes his head frantically. 

“Not, not hungry, please.” His hands scrabble at Leonard’s shoulders. Leonard rocks him back and forth, making meaningless hushing sounds. “I _died,_ Len, and I kept dying, oh God, make it stop, please make it stop…”

“You’re home,” Leonard coos. Barry’s started to shake uncontrollably, so fast that anywhere they’re touching is going numb. He compensates by holding him tighter and hopes he’s not hurting him. “Oh, you’re home, Scarlet. Shh, shh, you’re home, you’re safe.” 

“I didn’t stop it.” Leonard can barely hear him for the way he’s vibrating. “The antimatter wave, it’s still coming, I kept dying and it wasn’t enough…”

“Shh, Scarlet, no,” Leonard coos. “It’s over, it’s done. You’re safe, we’re all safe. It’s over, the Crisis is over.” 

The temperature in the Speed Lab plummets. Leonard starts to shiver; Barry, by contrast, slows down. This must have been Frost’s plan, because as soon as he stops vibrating, she sticks him with a syringe. Leonard holds him tight while the sedative takes effect, glaring at Frost all the while. 

“What?” she demands. “He wasn’t going to calm down any other way.” 

Leonard carries him to the medbay and watches carefully while Frost, with Caitlin’s help, sets up a nutrient drip. When she’s finished, he sits on the cot and takes Barry’s hand in both of his. “You’re safe,” he manages before his voice breaks. It’s foreign, dangerous, to come this close to tears where anyone could see him, but right now he doesn’t care. He has his boy back, and nothing else matters. 

It takes something like ten hours for Barry to wake. In that time, Leonard permits himself catnaps but wakes at the slightest movement. He needs to be there to reassure his boy when he wakes. 

Thankfully, Barry drifts back to consciousness rather than bursting awake all at once. His eyes flutter open and fixate immediately on Leonard’s face. Leonard is halfway through “You’re home, Scarlet” by the time Barry draws a breath to murmur, “Len?” 

“You’re home,” he repeats. “Cisco and I brought you home.”

“Home from where?” Barry’s brow furrows. A faint echo of his earlier panic creeps back into his eyes. Leonard squeezes his hand to ground him. 

“The Speed Force trapped you in a time loop to save your life,” he explains. “Cisco had to vibe me in to bring you back.” 

Barry’s grip on his hand tightens. “I remember. Oh—” His eyes widen. “Len, I _died.”_

“You told me.” Because of his experience in the Oculus, Leonard might be one of the few people Barry knows who will understand. Even now, years later, he sometimes wakes in a cold sweat from memory-dreams of feeling time shear his atoms apart. How much worse must it be for Barry, to live his death on a loop? “And I’m gonna have words with your Speed Force about that.” 

Barry’s free hand drifts to his belly. “I wasn’t ready,” he whispers. “I thought I was, all those weeks ago, and then as it got closer I realized I have a _really good life._ It’s…it’s so stupid how it took being doomed to die for me to realize that…”

“It’s not stupid.” Leonard moves their joined hands to rest on Barry’s slender belly. It’s foolish, _selfish_ to wonder if their fetus survived—he shouldn’t spare it a thought, he should just be grateful to have Barry back, that alone is more than he could have hoped…

“I was so furious.” Barry squeezes his hand in an irregular rhythm—a song, maybe, although Leonard couldn’t begin to guess it. “I know everyone says things make sense when you’re about to die, but I didn’t feel clarity, I just felt so _angry._ I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t want the Speed Force to choose me, I didn’t want to have to—” His voice breaks. Leonard hushes him. 

“You had every right, Scarlet. I’ve been there, remember? I raged my way into that good night and I wouldn’t expect you to do any less.” 

Silence stretches between them. Leonard can’t take his eyes off Barry’s face, even when those beautiful eyes skitter away from further eye contact. He wants to touch, to map the familiar planes of his face, but he doesn’t dare; Barry becomes incredibly sensitive to touch when he’s upset, and he has more than enough reason to be panicked right now. 

“I…” Barry shifts. “I should tell you…Caitlin told me something like, a week before I died—how long ago did I die?” 

“Two weeks.” The longest two weeks of Leonard’s life, and that’s counting the two weeks he spent locked in solitary. “And you don’t have to tell me, Scarlet. Caitlin told me.”

Barry glances down at their joined hands pressed atop his belly. “I asked her not to,” he whispers. “I didn’t want you to know you were going to lose two of us. And I’d hoped—back when I hoped I could survive—I didn’t know whether running would…and I couldn’t face you and tell you I lost…”

“Doesn’t matter.” Leonard doesn’t give it a second’s thought. “As long as I have you, Scarlet, it doesn’t matter.”

Barry makes a piteous sound. “I died _so much,_ Len. What if…”

“Shh. Right now, we worry about you, Scarlet.” Leonard brings Barry’s hand to his lips and kisses the knuckles. His skin is fever-warm. “I died, I know how this works. You’re gonna have nightmares and flashbacks and you’re gonna need reassuring that this is real. After that, we worry about the baby.” 

Barry clutches convulsively at his hand. “I don’t wanna, I can’t—I can’t—I can’t think I’m back there, I can’t go through that again…”

“I’ll be right here,” Leonard promises. No matter what it takes, he’ll be there for his boy. He can do no less after all the ways Barry supported him after the Oculus. “Won’t stop it, but it’ll make it better, like you did for me.”

Silence descends once again. Barry taps his fingers against his belly in no particular rhythm. Finally, in a small, weary voice, he asks, “Is everyone safe?” 

“Yes, Scarlet.” Leonard thinks of the ragtag band that stood with them against the antimatter wave. All of them had walked away, some more intact than others. “When you’ve had a chance to rest a little more, I’ll call them and you can see for yourself.”

Barry’s eyes light up with so much hope it breaks Leonard’s heart. “I can see them again,” he breathes. “I thought I’d never see them again. I never thought I’d see _you_ again.” He glances around the room, eyes lingering on the vials of test tubes, the bright lights, and the door to the Cortex. “I’m home.”

Leonard nods. He knows how critical that reassurance will become over the next few days. “To stay, Scarlet. You’re home, and none of us will let anything like that happen to you again.” 

Barry smiles up at him like he hung the stars. Leonard musters a ghost of a smile. If only he believed himself as much as Barry seems to.


End file.
